Forever After All © Benoit Photo
RED CARPET LAUNCHES 2024 TURF FESTIVAL AT DEL MAR SUNDAY
The Del Mar Turf Festival kicks off Sunday with the G3 Red Carpet. A field of eight fillies and mares will compete in the 1 3/8 miles grass event, the first of seven graded stakes to be run through next weekend.
Like most of the Turf Festival races, there are some out-of-state invaders entered in the Red Carpet. Forever After All arrives at Del Mar from the Brendan Walsh barn off of a near miss in the G3 Dowager at Keeneland last month.
“She finished second to a really good filly,” Walsh notes. “It was a very good run and we weren’t surprised. We were pretty confident she’d run a really good race out there. She did everything but win. Hopefully she can get it together this time and get that stakes win for us.”
This is not the first time Forever After All has come out West. She finished third in the G1 Gamely at Santa Anita in May.
“We’d like to try to get a graded stakes with her,” Walsh says. “She needs to go long so we thought we’d bring her out there and have a go at that one.”
Marksman Queen is another well-traveled filly from the Graham Motion barn. She doesn’t have the stakes experience that Forever After All boasts but she did run a close second in a second-level allowance race at Keeneland last out, missing by a neck in the 1 ½ mile turf marathon.
“She’s always been a filly who has shown us more in the morning than in the afternoon,” Motion contends. “The key was just trying this. We knew there was more there than we were seeing. She’s kind of bred to do this (go long). That’s why we tried it and I think it shows that’s what she wants to do.”
She’s a well-bred filly packing tons of potential.
“She’s a Dubawi mare,” Motion points out, “so if she can get some black type it would be a great opportunity for her. She’s handled everything well, she shipped well and knock on wood.” (Dubawi, incidentally, stands at Newmarket in England for a stud fee of approximately $440,000.)
Mrs. Astor is another invader who is from the Jonathan Thomas barn. The East Coast-based trainer has brought a string of horses out to Del Mar this fall. She ran fourth in the G3 Dowager after finally breaking out on her sixth try at entry level allowance company, winnng at Colonial Downs in September.
The local contingent is led by Moment’s Pleasure, winner of the $150,000 Solana Beach at Del Mar this summer. In fact, she’s has never finished worse than second in four starts at the seaside oval which always leads one to think ‘Horse for the Course.’ Unless you’re her trainer Craig Lewis.
“I don’t think that’s the case,“ Lewis notes. “She just had a couple of rough trips in the last couple at Santa Anita. I believe she’s a nice filly. Obviously, it’s a chance. She doesn’t look as good as some of the other horses in there but sometimes you got to take a shot. She acts like she’ll really like the distance so you never know.”
It’s the 59th running of the G3 Red Carpet. It used to be the Beverly Hills Handicap when it was run at Hollywood Park. It goes as Race 7 on the nine-race Sunday card. Probable post is 3:30 p.m.
Here’s the field with the jockeys and morning line odds: Ima Joker (Kyle Frey, 6-1); Forever After All (Juan Hernandez, 2-1); Everything Bugs Me (Mike Smith, 12-1); Moment’s Pleasure (Kazushi Kimura, 5-1); Mrs. Astor (Vince Cheminaud, 9/2); Marksman Queen (Umberto Rispoli, 4-1); Mahina (Hector Berrios, 10-1), and Queens Command (Antonio Fresu, 12-1).
TURF FESTIVAL TO SHOWCASE TOP HORSES FROM AROUND THE U.S.
129 horses have been nominated for the eight races that make up this year’s Turf Festival at Del Mar. Eight of those horses were cross-nominated in other races assuring another exciting turn out for the grass races planned this Sunday and next weekend.
“Overall, I think it’s shaping up really well,” racing secretary David Jerkens says. “I’m encouraged by the support.”
The line-up of nominees are a mix of out-of-town barns and local contingents. They include trainers Chad Brown, Graham Motion and Brendan Walsh, along with Southern California’s finest including Phil D’Amato, Doug O’Neill and Richard Mandella. Some of the participation is a direct fallout from this year’s Breeders’ Cup.
“If you look at the Matriarch,” Jerkens notes, “we have two fillies that shipped in for Breeders’ Cup undercard races, Aspen Grove and Sacred Wish. They have been here since the Breeders’ Cup. (Trainer) Jonathan Thomas shipped here for the meet and he’s well represented all over the nominations. He sent a string for the first time this fall.
“I think it (Breeders’ Cup) helped expose our races,” Jerkens continues. “I think we got a strong response in terms of nominations.”
Some of the notable horses found in the nominations are Carson’s Run, winner of the G1 Saratoga Derby, nominated for the Hollywood Derby; Redistricting from Chad Brown’s barn in the Seabiscuit; G1 Queen Elizabeth II Cup winner Gina Romantica in the Matriarch, and Wesley Ward’s Clock Tower in the Cecil B. DeMille. Keep in mind, just because they nominate doesn’t mean they’ll run. But, they’re being considered.
The roster of jockeys expected to come out for the Turf Festival is an impressive one. The Ortiz Brothers will be here along with Frankie Dettori, Flavien Prat, Javier Castellano and Joel Rosario.
The job of luring all these out-of-town outfits to Del Mar for the Turf Festival, as well as getting the local barns to jump in, began months ago.
“We typically like to release the stakes schedule in the middle of our summer meet and that’s when it starts,” Jerkens states. “Basically, just communicating what we’re offering. For the most part our schedules remain unchanged so they’re on people’s radar all over the country. The races are scheduled at a time when you have weather issues on the east coast so it becomes more attractive.”
And then Jerken’s just prays for nice weather.
“That’s the key to the fall meet,” Jerkens concedes. “Stay dry. We focus on a lot of turf racing so we pray for dry weather.”
The Turf Festival begins Sunday with the G3 Red Carpet. It continues next Friday with the G2 Hollywood Turf Cup. Entries will be drawn Sunday.
Saturday, November 30 there are a trio of graded stake races on the Jimmy Durante Turf course: The G1 Hollywood Derby, the G2 Seabiscuit and the G3 Jimmy Durante. Entries will be drawn Tuesday.
It all wraps up Sunday, December 1 with three more grass stakes: the G1 Matriarch, the G3 Cecil B. DeMille and the $100,000 Stormy Liberal. Entries will be drawn Wednesday.
COLD MORNINGS GREET EARLY RISERS AT DEL MAR
Southern Californians give up the right to complain about the cold when we move here. But the bitterly cold mornings at Del Mar this week have prompted even some veterans of the track to admit it’s the coldest it’s been for as long as they can remember.
The National Weather Service says the low at Del Mar Friday morning was 44. Knock off a few degrees in portions of the barn area and in the grandstand that don’t see the sun after September and even the weather-tested horsemen were bundled up.
Beanies, hoodies, and parkas have taken the place of the baseball caps and short sleeves as temperatures plunge from the seventies in the summer into the forties this fall. Of course, when the high in Philadelphia yesterday was 39, it’s hard to find sympathy from anyone outside of California. Ask any horseman on the grounds about their coldest experiences and they most always will think back to times they were back east.
“In New York,” trainer Richard Mandella remembers. “I was assistant trainer to (Victor “Lefty”) Nickerson in 1973 and they had an ice storm. I couldn’t get in my car and I had to walk to work. I lived just behind the gate at Aqueduct where we stabled. I had to gallop horses that day and it was pretty cold.”
Mandella spends most of his time now in California and he can remember some chilly mornings out west.
“Several years ago at Santa Anita it got down into the 20s,” Mandella states. “When I was a kid at Three Rings Ranch in Beaumont, California it would get in the 20’s a lot there. I would ride onto the gap at the racetrack and the water spigot for the water truck was there and it would have an icicle hanging out of it.”
Leandro Mora, assistant to trainer Doug O’Neill, remembers the icicles he encountered while in Pennsylvania.
“We sent a string of horses to Philadelphia and I used to make the trip,” Mora says. “One time they did not let us fly out that’s how bad it was. It was a blizzard. When the snow and everything freezes you see the icicles hanging from the houses. Being a Californian I thought it was Christmas decorations. No, they were like swords.”
There was another time when Mora went back to Kentucky.
“The Breeders’ Cup back at Churchill (2006), when Lava Man ran,” Mora recalls. “It was very cold. That’s probably why they keep the Breeders’ Cup on the West Coast because the East Coast sometimes it snows and we didn’t expect it. We went like Californians and it was not California weather.”
Trainer Bob Hess, Jr. is a native Californian, born in Chula Vista. But he’s experienced his share of cold weather.
“In ’91 I was at Aqueduct for the first time,” Hess notes. “It was in November for what is now the Cigar Mile. It was the NYRA Mile back then and it was in the 30’s. I’ve been to Keeneland when it snows and it’s in the high 20s, low 30’s. I flew into New Orleans once to buy a horse and the track didn’t open until 10 o’clock because it was frozen.
“The horses like it to an extent,” Hess continues, “but they don’t like it super cold. This is fine.”
Del Mar track announcer Larry Collmus has been to almost every racetrack in the United States and he knows cold when he feels it.
“Probably at Suffolk Down in the winter,” Larry Collmus states. “(It gets) in the teens. It would reach certain temperatures when you just won’t run in it. I remember one year, it was Martin Luther King Day and we had to cancel the races. The wind chill was 25 below. You have 18 layers of clothes on and it’s not helping.”
Collmus generally does his work high up in the grandstand. Here at Del Mar he calls the races on the roof.
“This is one of the cooler booths,” Collmus says of Del Mar in the fall. “I’ve been closing the backdoor because the wind is coming in off of the roof. This meet has been by far cooler than the other ones. Before, I never gave it a thought. Now I’m like, ‘Do I need three layers?’”
And there you have it from a guy who lives in New Jersey.
COOLING OUT: Jockey Antonio Fresu won three races in a row Friday to jump back in the lead in the jockey standings. Fresu now has 11 wins to Umberto Rispoli’s 10…The Beer and Cider Fest will be held today on the west end of the Grandstand tarmac. $15 will get you five tastes from premium local breweries. Ciders and seltzers also will be available for sampling. It starts at noon and goes until 4 p.m.…Tomorrow is Del Mar’s Toys For Tots campaign where the track teams up with the Marine Corp in their highly successful fundraiser. Those who bring an unwrapped toy or make a monetary donation will receive free admission to the track…Notable works on Saturday: Dirt – Truly Quality (4f, :49.00); Atitlan (5f, 1:01.60), and Speedy Wilson (5f, 1:00.20).